Media

MSNBC has been in a state of decline for as long as I can remember. In its latest iteration, the network apparently decided it hadn’t been left-wing enough during the Keith Olbermann days, so it “leaned forward”–I never understood what that meant–until it did a face-plant. What makes this Media Post article on the troubled news network interesting is that it is non-political. MSNBC’s decline is assessed from a strictly »

I’d like to add a few observations to Scott’s important post about Mickey Kaus’ departure from the Daily Caller. Kaus wrote a column criticizing Fox News for not leading the charge against Obama’s executive amnesty. Tucker Carlson, a Fox News contributor and host, pulled the column. Kaus resigned. I raised basically the same concern as Kaus tried to about Fox News during the debate on the Schumer-Rubio amnesty legislation in »

Mickey Kaus posted a long, detailed critique of the coverage of President Obama’s unconstitutional amnesty on FOX News at the Daily Caller this week. Kaus criticized FOX News for not leading the opposition to amnesty. “Fox is supposed to be the feisty opposition network. You’d think it would wage a rousing campaign against Obama’s executive actions on immigration, which are surely wildly unpopular among its viewers, both because of their »

This is my favorite news headline so far this year. I’m not sure what’s more mordantly funny—that the New York Times would run such a deadpan headline, or that the story itself might actually be true and accurate. Good to know that the CIA is on top of adapting to modern threats. Just in the nick of time. I suspect by now they’ve finally “connected all the dots” on the »

The left has a new talking point — actually a taunt — regarding Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran. In unison, the left is tweeting that the Senator, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, couldn’t find Iran on a map. Accusing a political adversary of being a yokel — that’s just the kind of insightful analysis we can count on from the left. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen joined the »

The mainstream media won’t let up on Hillary Clinton (nor should it). Ruth Marcus poses 13 questions about Clinton’s use of private email at the State Department: 1. Why did you make the decision to use a personal email account rather than government email upon becoming secretary of state? 2. Why did you believe this approach was necessary and/or preferable to using an official email account? 3. Did others working »

The wretched Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva has sent letters to seven university presidents based on his concerns about the heterodox climate-related testimony of professors at the institutions. He has sought “detailed records on the funding sources for affiliated researchers who have opposed the scientific consensus on man-made global warming,” as the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick put it in “House Dems: Did Big Oil seek to sway scientists in climate debate?” »

If the mainstream media were applying the sort of scrutiny to Hillary Clinton it has applied to Republican presidential candidates, we would by now have seen articles in the New York Times and the Washington Post about Whitewater, Travelgate, and the 1993 health care reform debacle. We would also have been treated to disparaging stories about Clinton dating back to her days as a Goldwater Girl. But the MSM’s fondness »

Former CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson asks herself how the media would treat a given behavior if it were practiced by a Republican. If the media would go ballistic, Attkisson suggests, the same behavior ought to be deemed newsworthy when a Democrat practices it. As she explains in her memoir Stonewalled, she calls it The Substitution Game. There is more than one reason why Attkisson resigned her employment with »

I had to do a double shot to make sure that this headline really came from CBS News: The Gender Pay Gap Is a Complete Myth Not a half-truth, a semi-myth, a sort of small lie. A “complete myth.” Just take in the lede: According to all the media headlines about a new White House report, there’s still a big pay gap between men and women in America. The report »

The Democrats and the media have their undies in a bunch over Rudy Giuliani’s disparagement of Barack Obama’s attitude toward the United States of America. Rudy has allegedly crossed a line by questioning Obama’s patriotism, though Giuliani himself denies that he has done so. He has merely observed that by outward appearances Obama doesn’t love the United States. That seems to me an uncharacteristic act of hairsplitting on Rudy’s part. »

Late Wednesday night Politico reported that Rudy Giuliani spoke at a private dinner in New York featuring Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Here is Darren Samuelsohn’s account: The former New York mayor, speaking in front of the 2016 Republican presidential contender and about 60 right-leaning business executives and conservative media types, directly challenged Obama’s patriotism, discussing what he called weak foreign policy decisions and questionable public remarks when confronting terrorists. “I »

David Ignatius is the prominent Washington Post columnist who specializes in foreign affairs. I’ve written about him a lot, as in “Ignatius ignores” and “The case of David Ignatius.” His superficiality and animus can’t be concealed, but they are manifested in smooth prose and an authoritative voice. It’s a killer combination. Earlier this week in “A perfect storm brews in the Middle East,” Ignatius served as the medium for the »

Yesterday’s Star Tribune featured Kim Ode’s profile of former Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Erwin Marquit. Marquit is dying and Ode is fawning. The source of Ode’s attraction to Marquit is Marquit’s run for governor in 1974 as a Communist. The romance of Communism hasn’t worn off for Ode or her editors at the Star Tribune. Ode’s profile is “Erwin Marquit, state’s best-known Communist, reflects on his life.” I’m sure Ode is »

William Levin is a graduate of Yale Law School, former clerk on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and former special assistant in the Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel. He writes to comment on developments related to the Supreme Court’s pending decision in King v. Burwell on the legality of Obamacare subsidies provided via exchanges established by the federal government. Bill assumes that the Supreme Court will get »

When I heard former AP Washington bureau chief Ron Fournier state in passing on a recent Fox News Special Report panel that “Bush lied us into war in Iraq,” I just groaned. Fournier has moved on from the AP to become senior political correspondent and editorial director of National Journal. Fournier presents himself as the moderate voice of reason and common sense, and he is a distinguished journalist, but the »

In a reliable sign that Scott Walker is now a first-tier presidential prospect, the media wants to know what he thinks about evolution. Walker’s answer — “that’s a question a politician shouldn’t be involved in one way or the other” — is a sign that he can live up to first-tier status. Here’s another reliable sign that Walker is in the first-tier: the Washington Post is probing the “mystery” of »